EXPOCHICAGO extending reach to DuSable Museum

EXPOCHICAGO/2017, the International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art presented annually for the past six seasons by Art Expositions, LLC, will be spreading its wings this fall to include a major exhibit at the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Place. The Expo, which hosts more than 145 leading international exhibitors, will run Sept. 13 – 17 at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall.

On Tuesday, along with the DuSable Museum, the Palais de Tokyo and the Institut Francais, and in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, the Expo announced that the Roundhouse at the DuSable would be the official location for Palais de Tokyo’s off-site exhibition. Curated by the Palais de Tokyo’s Katell Jaffrès, this group exhibition will present the work of emerging artists from both the French and Chicago art scenes, “focusing on the dialogue between architecture and artistic process.”

Utilizing the raw, historic space of the Roundhouse — a 17,000-sq. ft. building constructed in 1881 by Burnham and Root, one of Chicago’s most famous architectural firms of the 19th century, the exhibition will take its cue from the Palais de Tokyo’s “Hors Les Murs” project, and will emphasize the relationship between the space of the Roundhouse, and the selected artists’ site-specific works (to be announced at a later date). Working in collaboration with Andrew Schachman, a Chicago-based guest designer nominated by the Graham Foundation, Jaffrès will invite artists with a connection to France and Chicago to conceive newly commissioned installations—both as works of art and spaces able to welcome the work by other artists.

This first U.S. satellite exhibition of Palais de Tokyo will open during Expo Art Week and run concurrently with the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial (Sept. 16-Dec. 31).

In a prepared statement, Jaffres noted: “The singularity of the Roundhouse makes it an ideal space to develop the exhibit outside of Paris. The structures or ‘stations’ that the artists will create will each act as an architectural intervention within the exhibition, inducting action into the exhibition space, and creating an accommodation and correspondence between the sculptures, installations or video works by the other artists in the show.”

“The simultaneity of EXPO CHICAGO and the Chicago Architecture Biennial provides the opportunity to affirm the vital relationship between the two disciplines of art and architecture,” said Palais de Tokyo president Jean de Loisy.

“The DuSable Museum is honored to have been selected as the location for Hors les Murs, a groundbreaking collaboration between EXPO CHICAGO, Palais De Tokyo and the Institut français,” said Perri L. Irmer, president & CEO of the DuSable Museum. “I am sure that this first U.S. exhibition for the Palais de Tokyo will be one of many more exciting exhibits to come to the DuSable Museum, and this exhibition will serve as another example of what a world-class city Chicago is and will continue to be in the future.”

The Roundhouse, originally designed as a stable, has not been used for more than half a century.